Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er, CNC3

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Michael Cher­rie seems to be fi­nal­ly at the cusp of his long-de­sired ca­reer goal. As Con­rad Chisholm, Cher­rie is cou­pled with Regi­na King’s Shirley, in the Net­flix film that bears the same name as her char­ac­ter.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to Cher­rie via Zoom as he is cur­rent­ly in LA try­ing to max­imise the mo­men­tum from the film and se­cure the es­sen­tial con­nec­tions a Hol­ly­wood ac­tor needs. Cher­rie is a known face and voice in Trinidad. Long ac­knowl­edged as one of our best ac­tors, he was most re­cent­ly on-stage for Machel Mon­tano’s open­ing pan­tomime be­fore his Monarch-se­cur­ing per­for­mance of Soul of Ca­lyp­so.

Will Cher­rie’s em­bod­i­ment of Con­rad in Shirley do the same for his act­ing ca­reer?

In Shirley, he is matched to King, who is not on­ly well-known in Trinidad since her child­hood run on the 80s sit­com 227 as Bren­da, but has since be­come a mul­ti-award-win­ning ac­tress. She won an Os­car for If Beale Street Could Talk for which she al­so re­ceived a Gold­en Globe award. She al­so has sev­er­al Em­mys un­der her belt. Ter­rance Howard is al­so in the cast, recog­nis­able from his roles in Em­pire and The Best Man movies. He is al­so an Acad­e­my Award-nom­i­nat­ed ac­tor for Hus­tle and Flow.

The op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­tim­i­da­tion were there, but Cher­rie him­self said, “The gaunt­let is put down.” He more than holds his own. There are scenes where he fills the screen with the emo­tions bub­bling with­in Con­rad that he has kept buried with­in, erupt­ing on­ly at one point to tell his wife, Shirley, that he has re­signed him­self to be­ing the shad­ow of a hus­band she re­quires.

Through­out the film, Cher­rie is tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­cat­ing vol­umes with­out words. When asked about this, he said he just tried with every take to re­ceive the en­er­gies be­ing di­rect­ed at him from his screen part­ner to be­come more be­liev­able in the role.

“He got a chance to kiss Regi­na King!” his friend and col­league Pene­lope Spencer told us gig­gling. She has known Cher­rie for years. Like King, she played his wife, act­ing op­po­site him in Tony Hall’s bi­o­graph­i­cal play Mar­cus and Amy about the Gar­veys.

“Tony Hall would have been so proud of him,” she said. “Tony Hall loved and be­lieved in Michael as well!”

Act­ing, and get­ting sig­nif­i­cant screen time in a Hol­ly­wood movie, as a Trinida­di­an-born-and-based ac­tor is a rare thing.

“Michael is like, he is our boy!” Spencer said. “You see him down the road the oth­er day!” His cast­ing “just rais­es my spir­it that it’s pos­si­ble!”

It’s true, that Amer­i­can ac­tors who do not have to be con­cerned about visas, and places to stay are dri­ven to an­guish over how hard it is to be dis­cov­ered, to get that big break. Cher­rie is not ig­no­rant of that fact and is grate­ful that peo­ple are watch­ing and en­joy­ing the film. He is al­so deeply ap­pre­cia­tive to his man­age­ment team at Ques­tion Mark En­ter­tain­ment and One De­gree of Sep­a­ra­tion (ODOS) for help­ing him se­cure this role.

His fo­cus now is try­ing to cap­i­talise on the mo­men­tum cre­at­ed by the pre­miere, the rat­ings and the in­ter­est gen­er­at­ed. But will this mean more roles for the tal­ent­ed ac­tor? The first hur­dle is get­ting the right per­mis­sions, “be­cause to be able to work in de peo­ple coun­try you have to have au­tho­ri­sa­tions to work in the peo­ple coun­try.”

This means that to move to the next lev­el he has to get US rep­re­sen­ta­tion and union mem­ber­ship. As he ac­tive­ly works to­wards his wildest dreams, the ac­tor, act­ing coach and di­rec­tor is al­so prag­mat­ic. As an As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Act­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, he speaks to the pro­gramme’s en­tre­pre­neur­ial thrust as a great thing. Since stu­dents are be­ing pre­pared to lead in the in­dus­try, they must be able to do more than just act, they need to know how to cre­ate spaces for their per­for­mances.

Amer­i­can ac­tress Is­sa Rae demon­strat­ed this abil­i­ty by build­ing a ca­reer path that took her from her YouTube se­ries Awk­ward Black Girl to HBO’s In­se­cure.

Be­ing dis­cov­ered is won­der­ful, but Caribbean cre­atives need to be prac­ti­cal. This ex­plains why he is so sup­port­ive of ODOS for its ef­forts to lo­cate Caribbean di­as­po­ra peo­ple and es­tab­lish con­nec­tions that can re­sult in con­crete out­comes for the re­gion’s tal­ent.

As an ac­tor Cher­rie has done much, but still has so much to give to the craft. Of his work in Shirley, he said, “I feel re­al­ly proud to have been a part of this project. I feel re­al­ly proud to have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with these amaz­ing artists!”

Af­ter see­ing the film, it is safe to say Cher­rie has a right to feel proud.